What we learned from David Cameron at the Leveson Inquiry

After revelatory performances from his predecessors - Tony Blair in particular - it was time
for David Cameron to take to the stand at Leveson today.
Given the prime minister's closeness to Rebekah Brooks and
her husband (see "LOLgate"), his hiring of Andy Coulson and the
ongoing Jeremy Hunt saga, there was a lot on the
line. Despite all that, he didn't look nearly as petrified as the
culture secretary did last week. Here we break down the biggest
talking points...

1. Cameron and Coulson have conflicting evidence The key exchange today was Robert Jay QC pounding Cameron
about hiring Andy Coulson as Downing St communications
director - in particular whether he asked the former News of
the World editor about any more hacking stories emanating from News
International. Cameron was often vague about how often and how
deeply he probed Coulson but - crucially - he claimed that he
frequently asked for more details after Coulson's appointment.
Coulson has previously stated that Cameron never asked him about
hacking after July 2009. Still, the prime minister never sought
independent verification when Coulson assured him that the phone
hacking story had died.

2. Rebekkah Brooks is just as bad at
texting When Brooks gave her evidence to the Leveson inquiry back
in May we all guffawed at Cameron's "LOL" texts and Eton-ignorance
at what it actually stood for. At least his texts didn't involve
dodgy jokes like Brooks'; she texted Cameron before his
Conservative Party conference speech in 2009 wishing him good
luck and signing off "Yes He Cam." It's almost bad enough to make
Obama press the red button. (That text became a headline
on The Sun a few days later.)

3.The prime
minister won't be taking over The Apprentice any time
soon Robert Jay QC asked the prime minister about who
else was head hunted for the role of director of communications
that eventually went to Andy Coulson. Cameron said he saw Guto
Harri alond with someone at BBC and a broadsheet journalist. The
criteria?"My view was it was necessary to have someone tough and
robust, he did his job very well and had a good code of behaviour
in how he did his job." Given that Coulson's code of behaviour was,
er, phone-hacking, we'd hate to see the other guys' CVs...

4. Sam Cam knows the diary better than the PM Cameron got a bit flustered and fidgety when asked by
Robert Jay how frequently he met with Rebekah Brooks with the prime
minister, not really giving a straight answer apart from saying he
liked playing tennis with Brooks' husband Charlie. The PM needed to
then use the hour-long lunch break to phone Samantha back at Number
10, who consulted with her own diary to inform Dave that the two of
them saw Brooks "roughly once every six weeks" between 2008 and
2010.

5. Cameron's less than total recall
It is obvious that if the majority of us were asked what exactly
we had said to someone at 10:31am in a meeting with someone three
years ago we would probably use David Cameron's favourite new
phrase "I don't recall." But it does seem a bit of a flimsy excuse
when asked whether he read Jeremy Hunt's memo supporting the News
Corp BSkyB bid only a year and a half ago. Still, this is the prime minister who forgot one of his
children in the pub...

6. Robert Jay's
unfeasibly erudite word of the day If you thought the BBC's series Silk put the fun
in courtroom drama, Robert Jay is earning his QC stars day-on-day.
Today's favourites included "occlude", "adventitious", and
"recondite."